Nuri al-Maliki, Iraq's prime minister, has ordered a halt to the construction of a barrier that would separate a Sunni enclave from Shia areas in Baghdad as Sunni-led Arab governments told him to step up reconciliation efforts with Sunni fighters if he wanted Arab support.
Al-Maliki said on Sunday: "I oppose the building of the wall and its construction will stop. There are other methods to protect neighbourhoods."
US troops began placing six-tonne sections of wall around Adhamiyah, a mainly Sunni Arab area surrounded by Shia areas in east Baghdad two weeks ago.
The construction drew sharp criticism from residents and Sunni leaders who complained it would isolate the community. (More...)
Let us lower all the flags to half-mast.
Let us begin now the somber trumpet.
Let us gather around with bowed heads
And recall this day as the butchered age.
Watch it trace across the gnarled lands,
Ascend the gate of our most everlasting
With the clatter of a filched kingdom
Bearing the ashen and eyeless face of war.
Let us erect a wall of rubbish and bones
Skyward surrounding all the arid breath,
Honoring our pursuit and its conclusion;
Empire and anguish; kingdom come.
© 2007 mrp/thepoetryman
GATHER AROUND
FETID WAR
The leading US military commander in Iraq has told US senators that Baghdad could be secured with less than the 21,500 extra troops being sent as part of a new strategy to end the sectarian violence.General George Casey also denied that US policy had failed in Iraq despite heavy criticism from the Armed Services Committee.
Casey told the committee on Thursday that he had recommended just two additional brigades would be needed for the Iraq capital, rather than the five brigades that have been ordered to Iraq as part of George Bush's new plan.
The new strategy will see more than 21,500 soldiers added to the 138,000-strong US force in Iraq and deployed mainly in Baghdad.
At Least 62 Killed in Iraqi Violence
By ROBERT H. REID Associated Press Writer
A pair of suicide bombers detonated explosives Thursday among shoppers in a crowded outdoor market in a Shiite city south of Baghdad, killing at least 45 people and wounding 150, police said. Bombs and a mortar attack killed at least 17 others in both Shiite and Sunni areas of Baghdad.
Overall, more than 100 people were killed or found dead across the country, reflecting the ongoing wave of sectarian and insurgency bloodletting as the U.S. military gears up for a major security operation to stem the violence.
The biggest attack took place in the center of Hillah, a city about 60 miles south of Baghdad. Police and witnesses said the two bombers strolled into the Maktabat market about 6 p.m. when the area was packed with shoppers buying food for the evening meal.
Dark Clouds Gather on the Distant Horizon:
The World Awaits George W. Bush's Attack on Iran
Alexander - February 1st, 2007
Dark clouds gather on the distant horizon - their presence trumpets the undeniable reality that something sinister is coming this way. As the light of truth and reality fades from the nation's political consciousness, between the flashes of lies and deceit is seen the foreboding outline of vultures awaiting tragedy and their chance to feast on the death it is certain to deliver.
Brings neither eye nor ear toward peace?
Slings us down instead of skyward?
Hurls love into the decaying bowels?
WAR! Fetid war is bringing the world to famine!
The slender, flag-wrapped youth are starved of life
While round leaders drip and devour their stale plans
Leaving veteran men of reason drooling on themselves
To gibber-jabber-dribble maddening absurdities!
O! Goddamnit we recognize these things! We know them!
Complicity’s the pungent slope of life’s interment.
This; our indifference, coats the angels in fresh blood,
Their malleable wings dripping in dreadfulness;
They are massive, undulating and beautiful arcing things
Conjuring up the world’s looming storm.
Fetid war is bringing the world to famine!
To hell with it and all the Goddamned drooling cowards!
Come angel! Thrust thy immense wings down upon them
Smashing their dread-filled plans...
And feed the world.
THE LOVER'S COT
(A Poetic Justice Collage)U.S. Gives Iraqi Hospitals Broken Promises in Place of Medicine
by Dahr Jamail
While US authorities sit on billions in funds supposedly earmarked for rebuilding Iraq, civilian hospitals are overcrowded and understaffed, basic supplies are scarce and preventable diseases are spreading.
Baghdad; July 5, 2004 – Despite promises of over $1 billion in US funding, hospital patients in Iraq continue to suffer ongoing hardship. Problems plaguing Iraqi hospitals fifteen months into what has been a brutal, bloody occupation range from ongoing medicine and equipment shortages to an overall lack of proper medical infrastructure.
As time has turned the union’s fate to powder,
In lasting grasp the lovers tongue’s promptly faded
And the stroke of burning desire’s a thrashing ache.
Their damp lips an ogre’s tapering,
Like the impulse to kill.
Outside our kingdom where the bough’s toss in the gale,
The shadows shift sudden radiance over stunned lovers,
The interruption comes loud and banging greedily
Through awkward fingers dancing on youthful breath
Seized with living.
There’s just one small cot for their sessions,
No room to operate,
No medicine or drugs
And no physician’s god-hand.
Our groping of liberation felled; belated, squandered.
Their lover’s face haggard, hollow eyes open, no remedy,
Limbs broken up and away... unable to reach one another.
Copyright © 2007 mrp / thepoetryman
OPEN LETTER DAY!
Your Baghdad surge is a stroke of military genius. It will surely be the ejaculant of victory. The English poet John Donne foretold you when he wrote, “...therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” Believe me, George, the bells will reverberate your name through out the eons, such is your infamy.
Greatness never errs, and you confirm your greatness every time you peer into the yawning jaws of defeat and see only victory. You inspire us with your grit, the grit that irritates and blurs your vision, allowing you to see what no other man can see.
Lead on; lead on! We who are the coalition of the stoned are sprawled in our gutters, cheering you on with our whiskey voices as tears pool in our red-rimmed eyes.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
SEPARATE INCIDENTS
The bipartisan Iraq Study Group released recommendations for changing course in the country, saying
President Bush's policy in Iraq "is not working." The Iraqi government said the U.S. report did "not come as a surprise," and it agreed that Iraq must take the lead in its own security.
"The situation is grave, very grave in fact, and cannot be tolerated," Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh said on the pan-Arab satellite TV channel Al-Arabiya. "Absolute dependence on foreign troops is not possible. The focus must be on boosting the Iraqi security forces." -By KIM GAMEL, Associated Press Writer (Full article...)
Coiling. Blooming.
Rumbling capital.
December 05, 2003.
Sounds of distant
Holidays’ ...booming.
God.
Cities long past their autumn.
George W. Bush.
Trees scraping
The squatting luminaries.
Burnt orange are the trees.
Dick Cheney.
No pleasure in frigid lifelessness…
Dogs howl
The scowling moon.
Bill Frist.
Pitiless are the mongrels
Greedily devouring children.
Condoleeza Rice.
All of this in the name of
A calamity-glooming worship.
Fred Phelps.
Under horrifying expressions
And last rites.
Donald Rumsfeld.
Boiling. Booming.
Shrieking center.
December 06, 2006.
Deafening noise
Over motionless homes.
Deus ex machina.
Copyright © 2006 mrp / thepoetryman
LISTEN CLOSELY; YOU MIGHT HEAR
An al-Sadr aide, Shaikh Abdul-Hadi al-Darraji, denounced the Baghdad raid, saying 11 civilians were killed and dozens wounded as U.S. jets fired on the area while people were sleeping on their roofs amid searing summer temperatures and electricity shortages.
"This is a big escalation from the American side," he said. "I condemn all the silence toward such violations and I call for the withdrawal of the American forces."
There were conflicting casualty figures. Lt. Kadim Abbas Hamza of the Sadr City police said fighter planes fired from the air at about 3:15 a.m. and nine people, including a woman, were killed and 14 were wounded. He also said eight people were arrested. A hospital official said seven people were killed and 34 wounded
______________________________
Now that we truly see them, the people of the world,
Why are our eyes not wet in the midst of scaly grief?
Have we not shrieked in nameless terror long enough,
Been onlooker to nightmares of insensible winters
Beckoning to us from unfilled graves etched in awe?
Now that we might truly see ourselves with the world’s stale eyes
Why do we condone the enduring massacre of even one more?
Are we so goddamned fearful to not flinch of this;
Our queasy indifference?
We should be vomiting out our coldness
And ingesting the puff-tongued hunger for peace!
We need be humble and reaching
Not bombing and preaching!
Forty-seven more bomb-split, blood-spilled,
Freedom-cuffed, breath-snuffed, and killed!
Listen… You can sense the dead eating our horror,
Heed the dry bone now bleached under dawn’s collapse,
Perceive the stars and moon tremble and overlap the other.
Listen closely; you can hear immense wings clambering for heaven.
mrp
BAGHDAD, Iraq - A suicide truck bomber struck a market in a predominantly Shiite area of Baghdad on Saturday, killing as many as 121 people among the crowd buying food for evening meals, one of the most devastating attacks in the capital since the war started.
The attacker was driving a truck carrying foodstuffs including oil and flour when he detonated a ton of explosives, destroying stores and stalls in the busy outdoor Sadriyah market, police said.
The late-afternoon explosion was the latest in a series of attacks against mainly Shiite commercial targets in the capital. No group claimed responsibility, but it appeared to be part of a bid by Sunni insurgents to provoke retaliatory violence and kill as many people as possible ahead of a planned U.S.-Iraqi security sweep.
Hours later, mortars slammed into several predominantly Sunni areas in Baghdad, killing at least two people and wounding nearly 20, police said.
pitching providence
“Now goddamnit, now, as the burning flesh is fresh in our head.
Lord knows we can’t miss our darling reality flick of ineffectuality.
O god forbid we peer beyond the shrub and see death-death-death.
Oh no, can’t have us considering the child’s blood on our hands.
That’d mean we’d need consider our own pitching providence.”
…muttered the rain on the limb-strewn streets as we flipped channels.
Yes! Son of a bitch! Yes! I said “our own pitching providence”!
I say it that one might sneer, snicker and scoff such silliness!
I say it that others might think,
“That guy’s fanatical!”
“That man’s off his meds! This is America!”
“The greatest country on earth!”
“Ours is the sopping land of liberty!”
“The kingdom of all things divine!”
Yes! O goddamnit! Yes! I shout it for the dim-witted inundated in lies!
I utter it for the delusional crouch-down-toad deriding the spirit to speak!
I declare it for it’s in front of us screeching, bloody and boiling!
Look! Look! There! Descending the stairs is this awful something!
This thing, it pours all the magnificence and misery down upon us!
Descending the stairway dripping with the fresh blood of others,
It comes down dripping the hopelessness wrought of greed and arrogance!
Look! Look goddamnit! In its arms it carries the vanishing world!
One-hundred and twenty!
One hundred and twenty lifted by the tall indignity of empire!
Lifted apart by those waiting on god to intervene on their behalf!
We are fools! It is not on our behalf that god shall the earth render still!
It is not on our behalf that the long and towering indignity carts the world!
It’s because of our dishonor that humanity needs such nurturing at all!
Our apathy rivals any in the goddamned history of fouled indifference!
“Now goddamnit, America. Do it now you red-lipped whore of free will.
Start praising your miserable god now, America, now, as the burning flesh is fresh on our hands and we scoff at this; our pitching providence...”
Muttered the rain on the limb-strewn streets as we flipped channels.